Terry Jones: Time with Eskimos made Kavis Reed the man for Montreal's top job

The Montreal Alouettes chose Kavis Reed as their new general manager. They hire a man who ‘failed’ in his only opportunity as a head coach. They hired a guy who has ‘no previous history’ as general manager.

The truth is that Kavis Reed ‘failed’ as a head coach because his general manager traded away Rick Ray and abdicated his job to such an extent that coach Reed had no chance.

But in there, he ended up with plenty of experience as general manager. Unbelievable experience.

Being forced to do Eric Tillman’s job for him while trying to coach the Edmonton Eskimos at the same time gave Reed an education like few get in this game.

After resigning from the Saskatchewan Roughriders following a guilty plea in provincial court to a charge of sexually assaulting his teenage baby sitter, Tillman was hired by the Eskimos as GM but Reed ended up doing most of the GM job. He ended up looking after virtually all football administration, travel, player movement, salary cap management, etc. – virtually everything that didn’t involve personnel. And that was a mess with the league fining the Eskimos on several occasions.

Reed went from 11-7 to 7-11 to 4-14, not because he became a worse coach from one year to the next. Tillman was fired and replaced by Ed Hervey, who ended up firing Reed after that four-win season and hiring Chris Jones to take over the team that had been necessarily under reconstruction in Reed’s last year.

But here he was Tuesday taking his turn going through the ‘car wash’, as they call a day of doing media interviews, Adidas uniform and TSN promotional photos and video shoots; Kavis Reed, general manager Montreal Alouettes.

“Eric allowed me to do a lot of things. That’s the word I’m choosing: Allowed. It gave me the experience of having to look at the big picture. It gave me the opportunity to see how a team is developed and to see how the roster is developed with the salary cap.”

What at the time seemed like a nightmare, he now calls “a learning experience.”

He was determined to make it turn into an education for his next major job.

“I take the words of Ronnie Lancaster years ago when I went to Hamilton as defensive co-ordinator. He said, ‘Plot your future very carefully and make sure you study up. Don’t just be a positional coach if you have aspiration of being anything beyond a positional coach.’

“So since I was fired in Edmonton, I’ve been studying up. I’ve been going on scouting trips with people and asking the right questions. And having had the opportunity in Edmonton, it prepared me to understand that it was what I wanted to be my career path.”

When he was fired by the Eskimos, Reed still had a year left on his contract. He used the time off with pay to get his master of business administration and understand the business aspects.

The next year, he took an assistant coaching role in Montreal with some assistant GM duties.

“When I took the job in Montreal, I asked him to allow me to be a part of that and gain some experience. To his credit, he completely opened it up to me and see some things I didn’t see from a coach’s perspective.

“Unfortunately, I lost the job in Edmonton. It was my dream job. But I feel it helped prepare me for this.”

Throughout his playing career as an Eskimos defensive back, cut short by a neck injury, through his coaching career with several stops around the league and now through this, Reed has never moved his wife Darlene and family from Edmonton.

His kids, son Tarik and daughter Tyra, go to school at Mother Margaret Mary on Edmonton’s south side.

“We’ve lived in Edmonton my entire time as a coach,” he said of spending the winters in the Alberta capital. “We’ve lived 22 years in the city. In all the time since I was fired, I never, not even in one instance, had a negative comment from anybody I saw in my life in Edmonton.

“A lot of people understood. My greatest disappointment was that there were very few things I could do to accelerate the process,” he said of losing Ricky Ray and rebuilding from the mess Tillman had made.

“I knew the club was going in the right direction. I didn’t leave the Eskimos angry. I left disappointed because I didn’t get to see the end of the process.

“But now I’m in this job and I’ve had the experience at all phases, as positional coach, as co-ordinator as a head coach and all facets. So, yes, I’m a little amused when people said I don’t have any experience.”

GENERATION Q(B)

It’s being billed as ‘Three generations of quarterbacking greatness.’

But when Mike Reilly looks at the poster for the event, he says, ‘What’s wrong with this picture?’

“It’s definitely going to be an awesome experience. I’m looking forward to it. It’s an honour. But I can’t help but look at it as, ‘I shouldn’t be up there.’” said the Edmonton Eskimos quarterback.

“I’m going to be in awe as much as the fans are to be on stage with two guys like that.

“I’ve had the privilege at different times to talk to them. When Warren came back for the Wall of Fame (induction of Hector Pothier and Bill Stevenson in 2014), I spoke to him briefly right when he was coming off the field at half time and again after the game as well. Warren Moon, for anybody who knows anything about football, let alone somebody who is playing the quarterback position in Edmonton, you definitely know his history and what he means to the game.

“And then Calvillo, he was winning his second Grey Cup in a row when I came into the league. With all the records that he’s broken, I accidentally walked through a live interview at the Grey Cup just to introduce myself to say, ‘Hi.’

“To be on the same stage as them is going to be a special experience in my life. But, again, nothing that I’ve done in my career to this point warrants me being up there with them. I guess they had to pick somebody who is currently playing, so I’m glad they selected me.”

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